---
bibtext: @incollection{Boulhosa2011,
author = {Boulhosa, Patricia Pires}
title = {Ideals and Aspirations: Democracy and Law-Making in Medieval Iceland},
editor = {Isakhan, Benjamin and Stockwell, Stephen},
booktitle={The Secret History of Democracy},
year={2011},
publisher={Palgrave Macmillan London}
}
---
"Iceland’s kingless state – for Icelanders had no king before they submitted to the Norwegian one – led English-speaking scholars to use the term ‘commonwealth’, with its very specific seventeenth- century English historical associations and anti-monarchical connotations. Icelandic scholars prefer þjóðveldi, literally ‘people’s power’," p92
"Icelandic polity as a res publica or civitas with an aristocratic constitution." p92
"In Iceland, law-making operated within courts held at assemblies – including the Alþingi" ... "often called the ‘first democratic parliament’" p93
"Before the submission, Icelanders did not have law books, but they had laws which nowadays are known collectively as Grágás." ... "The Lawspeaker (lo ̨gso ̨gumaðr) was ‘required to tell men the law’ by reciting the laws at assemblies or upon request" p93
"As Icelanders prepared for the changes that the submission would bring, they were keen not only to consoli- date their own rights, but also to record their legal history, in the form of current and new laws as well as laws no longer effective." p94
"Contrary to what traditionalists may have once maintained, custom- ary law does not translate into a ‘democratic mode of law-making, reflecting the actual convictions of the ordinary people who practice them’ " p98
"Free men, aged 12 years or older, with a settled home, and who were capable of taking responsibility for what they said or swore were selected by the goðar to act as judges in each of the Quarter Courts" ... "If he did not own milking stock or was not a landowner, he did not qualify as a house- holder and belonged to the assembly group of the householder into whose care he put himself " p99
"the complexity of the communitarian structures which we see in the Grágás seems to reflect a fairly participative and dynamic legal system, even if one ultimately controlled by an oligarchy." p100
"According to the perception of the sagas, King Haraldr threatened the old social order, which was based on individuals’ freedom and power of decision as well as on their ancestral rights." p101
"Iceland then emerged as a society of self-governing free men, with a prominent farming oligarchy, responsible for the country’s legal and political organization" p102
"the law-making process described in Grágás, as well as the dynamic legal system through which this process operated, also seem surprisingly flexible and open to communitarian participation" p102